


Guard Dog

by rage_quitter



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Fake AH Crew, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-10 13:40:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4394036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rage_quitter/pseuds/rage_quitter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What do you do with a guard dog when you get a better one?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guard Dog

**Author's Note:**

> A prompt fill on tumblr for anonymous: Where maybe Michael used to be Geoff's guard dog at meetings before Ryan showed up. Geoff's like, "Michael's intimidating but not near as intimidating as some silent freak in a mask" and so he uses Ryan. So Michael starts to feel a little self conscious & decides to start one upping Ryan on everything that he does. Like killing more people on jobs, making more difficult shots & just trying to show that he's more useful than Ryan. Maybe Ryan catches on & there could be a dash of Myan thrown in?
> 
> Trigger warning for suicidal thoughts/actions.

“Michael, where are you going?”

Michael paused by the door to shoot Ryan an irritated look. “Why the fuck does it matter?” 

“Just wondering.” Ryan held up his hands in defense. 

“I’m going out, okay? I’m a grown ass man, I can handle myself. Besides, don’t you have something to do today besides heckle me for my every decision?”

“Jesus, man, it was just a question!” 

Geoff wandered into the room straightening his bow tie. “Hey, Ryan, you ready to go?”

“Yeah.” Ryan grabbed his mask off the counter and pulled it over his painted face. 

“Hey, Michael,” Geoff greeted cheerfully. “Where are you off to?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Michael growled, storming outside and slamming the door. 

Geoff and Ryan were going to meet with a client today. Geoff was going to smooth talk the sucker into making a deal with the crew. Ryan was going to be with Geoff, standing there being tall and broad and silent and terrifying. Michael was going to get fucking drunk and beat the shit out of someone. 

He slid into his sleek chrome Adder. Flashy? Yes. Fast? Yes. Should he be driving it right now? Absolutely not. Whatever.

He caught sight of Ryan and Geoff walking out of the crew’s headquarters in his rear view mirror as he pulled out. He bared his teeth and tightened his fingers on the steering wheel.

It was still pretty early, just after five, and people were starting to filter in the bar after their work day ended. Michael cleared a path with the logo in green on the breast of his jacket and the fire smoldering in his eyes. He seated himself at the bar and ordered a Fireball on the rocks. It burned his throat. 

By the time the hour had passed, he’d had three straight shots of Fireball and two F-Bombs. His blood was sizzling and his temper was hanging on a thread.

Needless to say, he got into a fight very, very quickly, was kicked out, and then hunted down the guys who started the fight with him. The first one, he disarmed, and then stabbed his knife into his throat and left him to choke on his own blood. 

The second man had friends.

Michael could’ve taken them, had he been sober. He could have fought them all, hands tied and blindfolded. But he was fairly drunk and steaming with rage that clouded his vision and his thoughts. He did very well for an angry drunk man, probably killing three and severely injuring two others. But the three left who were unhurt got the upper hand before Michael had realized it.

His face hurt, his head hurt, his chest, his leg. At least they didn’t kill him, he thought miserably as they left him laying half-conscious in an alley. This would probably put him out of heisting for a while though. Fuck.

He mustered his strength, his fizzling fire, and dragged himself to sit against the wall. He would be fine. Just… a quick nap. Get his strength back, get sober, and then he’d go back to get his car. No one would dare touch it, not with the crew’s sign emblazoned in green on its hood. 

A nap would do him fine.

He didn’t know how long he was out before he was woken by a hand shaking his shoulder urgently and a soft, deep voice anxiously murmuring his name. Michael barely had his eyes cracked open before all the pain in his body hit him at once. He seized up, and whoever was with him quickly helped him angle himself to vomit on the ground. Michael’s body throbbed in agony. He groaned, shaking. 

“Michael, oh god,” the voice said quietly.

Michael recognized the voice and his mind snapped back into place immediately. His temper flared, but fizzled down with the pain. “What’re you doing here?” 

Ryan resisted Michael’s attempt to shrug him off. “You didn’t come home. I went looking for you.”

“Why?”

“I was worried. Gavin called you, Geoff called you, I called you, no answer. Thank fucking god your car is so damn shiny, you can’t miss that thing from a mile away.”

“I didn’t need you to come looking for me,” Michael growled weakly. “I’d’ve been fine.”

“Really? You’ve got at least three broken ribs, a broken nose, a stab wound on the thigh, and a sprain in your elbow. As far as I can tell from right now.” Ryan shook his head. “You couldn’t have walked back to your car, not like this.”

“I’d be fine, Ryan!” Michael pushed himself up with his good arm. “I’ve had worse. This isn’t shit. I just needed to sleep off the alcohol.”

“You were gone for eleven hours.” Ryan’s icy blue eyes were glued to Michael’s deeper brown ones.

“Wh… eleven?”

“Yeah. It’s four in the morning.” 

“… Fuck.”

“How long were you sitting here?”

“Um… by that count… ten, I guess. Shit. I gotta… get back to my car, get home, I’ll see Caleb about it later…” Michael tried to push himself up, but his leg refused to cooperate and his chest resisted his every move. His eyes watered.

“Sit down,” Ryan snapped. “Don’t move, you’ll make it worse!”

“I’m fine!”

“You’re not fine!” Ryan punched the wall beside Michael’s face. Michael didn’t flinch, glaring at Ryan. “You had everyone worried sick!”

“Sure they were,” he muttered bitterly. 

Ryan’s brow furrowed. His facepaint was smudged from a long day of wear. “The fuck does that mean?”

Michael snorted. “It doesn’t matter,” he echoed himself from earlier. 

“No, it fucking does,” Ryan said. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Good fucking question,” Michael replied with the same anger in his voice. “If you find the answer, please, tell me.”

“God damn it, Michael.” Ryan pulled back his hand. “You’ve been acting like a maniac.”

“Says the skull mask wearing murderous nutcase,” Michael grumbled.

Ryan sighed. “Be serious for two seconds. I have no idea what’s wrong with you. You’ve been reckless and jumping the gun on everything. You’ve volunteered to solo almost any job that needs taking care of and even doing shit we didn’t really need done. This is the third bar fight you’ve gotten into this month, but by far the worst.”

“Just trying to help the crew, is that a bad thing? And I always get in bar fights when I have Fireball, fuck off.”

“You could have  _died_ , Michael!”

“But I didn’t.”

“What if you  _did_?”

“So _what_ if I did?” 

Ryan stared at Michael, face unreadable. Michael glared back, tired, angry, and in pain. Finally, his face softened, and the concern and pity on every feature made Michael want to hit him. Or himself. Or both. “Please, Michael,” he said. “Please tell me what’s going on. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me about it.”

Michael couldn’t find the bitter and angry remark he wanted to spit. The honesty in Ryan’s voice, the sympathy, made Michael’s hard shell weak. He shrank back into the wall, away from Ryan.

“I want to help you,” Ryan said. “You can’t keep doing this. If you die, everyone will… god, they’d be devastated. I don’t even… I can’t even think of it… it would be the worst…”

“How can you be sure?” Michael finally said, his voice cracking. “How do you know that they’d give a shit? Run out of usefulness and then what? Get replaced and then what?”

Ryan gaped at him.

Michael’s words tumbled from his sore throat, hoarse, but unstoppable now that he’d started. “Especially me. I mean, what am I now? The angry one? That’s it. I’m backup. No, not even, I’m the backup-backup, if the real backup fails. Which it won’t, of course. What do you do with a guard dog when you get a better one? You leave its ass outside and throw it scraps. Sure, it’s still there, but why? If it kicks the bucket, whatever. Less scraps to worry about. It wasn’t doing anything anyway. Just prowling around looking angry and barking at the neighbors. So why the fuck does it matter if I go out and get wasted? Who cares? I don’t. I’m just the useless dog.”

Ryan had since sat back, watching Michael with wide eyes, listening to him vent. Michael’s eyes burned with tears, but he didn’t break his angry stare.

“You… really think that?” Ryan finally asked. “That you’re just a dog with no more use?”

Michael shrugged.

“Michael…” Ryan surprised him suddenly by leaning forward and looping his arms, with a gentleness Michael never would have expected from a guy who could snap a man’s neck with his bare hands, around Michael. He pulled him into his chest with the utmost attention to his injuries, and Michael couldn’t help but find his warmth soothing. “That’s so unbelievably wrong. I don’t know where you came up with that. Jesus. Michael, we care about you, we all do. We’re not just a crew, we’re a family. You know?”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Michael mumbled into Ryan’s shoulder.

Ryan’s fingers wove carefully through Michael’s red hair. “And it should be easy for you, too. I don’t know why you…” He stopped. “Oh.”

Michael stayed silent.

“Is this… fuck, is this because Geoff stated taking me to meet clients and shit? Guard dog… you think… I replaced you?”

Michael’s only response was to tighten into himself. 

“Fuck. If I knew you felt like this, I would’ve said something. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize… I didn’t think you thought I was replacing you. That I was… ‘cause I’m not, Michael, I’m not, and as soon as we get you back home, I can tell Geoff, and we can… fuckin’ take turns or something. You’re not useless. You are important, and this crew wouldn’t be what it is without you. You’re part of it, a very important part of it, and of us, and our lives, and we care about you, okay?” Ryan’s voice grew soft. “I care about you.”

Michael wasn’t crying. He buried his face in the leather of Ryan’s shoulder, allowing the older man to hold him closer. 

“Please stop trying to prove to Geoff that you are important, because he already knows you are. Please stop taking so many risks and just generally being a fucking idiot, ‘cause if you die, I would not be okay, none of us would. We need you, Michael.”

“I… I’m sorry,” Michael said to Ryan’s jacket. “It’s just… it’s not easy.”

“I know. I know it’s not. I’ve been there, trust me. But you don’t need to keep all this in, either, okay? I’m here for you. I promise, I’ll listen to you and do what I can to help you. I promise.”

“Thank you, Ryan.” 

“Do you want to go home now and get those injuries looked at?”

“Yeah.”

“Hold on, okay? This will probably hurt.” 

Michael was about to ask what he meant when Ryan’s arms moved, and Michael hissed in pain as he was lifted up, and Ryan stood, grunting with the effort as he held Michael to his chest. Instinctively Michael looped his arms around Ryan’s neck, though his grip was weak. 

Slowly, Ryan carried Michael out to where his car was parked on the side of the road. He maneuvered Michael into the passenger side and got in the driver’s. “I’ll get your car tomorrow,” he said. “Later today, I guess.”

“Thank you. And Ryan?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for finding me. And… for all this other stuff. The talking, and the honesty, and all the touchy feely shit.” Michael cracked a grin.

Ryan smiled back and reached over to wipe dried blood from Michael’s face. “Anytime you need me, okay?” With no warning, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to Michael’s forehead, gently, and while Michael was sitting stunned, turned the car on and plunged it into dim light as he began to drive them home.


End file.
